The Gesture of Filming

Th e miners went into the rock, as they did every morning.

Th ey moved their table to the cut in the rock they’d made the day before, and they set chairs around table, and poured cof-fee from thermoses, and stood, and sipped, and each chose a word (one chose “grapes” and one chose “fl ute” and one chose

“vine” and one chose “kiss”). And when they’d fi nished their coff ee they set cups on table and selves in seats and two be-came speakers and two bebe-came listeners and then they began.

Th e cave was fi lled with strips of sound. …viiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-iinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnne… …kisssssssssssssssssssssssss ssssss…

And it went that way for most of an hour, with speakers speaking and the listeners listening. (Th ey sometimes spent whole days this way, mornings given to sounds made and taken, breaks given and roles switched, and stopping for lunch, and coming back, and hollowing out more rock, and heading home for dinner.)

And it went that way for most of an hour, until a listener be-gan to hear speed (viiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine viiiiiiiiiiiiiiine vine vine vinevinevinevinevinevinevivivivivivivivivivivivi) and he looked at the fastmoving lips of the speaker and stopped and

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stood and so did the rest and they looked at the rock of the wall above the viney strip of sound and they saw the surface come alive with dark images — a flexing of shadow shoulders barna-cled with sea shells, a smacking-together of wet-bearded shadow lips. One took a sheet of very thin glass from a box on the floor, and he passed it to another, who placed the sheet against the wall and traced the shadows with his stylus. The miner traced until the shadows shifted, and he placed the finished sheet on the floor, and he took another, and he did it again. The four passed the morning this way, until the sheets were stacked tall and the shadows had lifted.

When that was done, they stood to the side and they watched as the stack of glass began to sweat droplets. They turned from the glass to attend to themselves and the first looked down to see his stylus turned trident, and the second tasted a mouthful of salt, and the third heard the sound of a conch shell being blown, and the fourth went blind as his eyes turned to pearls, and the first three looked at the last sheet of glass to find shadows play-ing upon it in the form of a sea god.

The archivist stood by, awaiting the men as they walked from the cave with that last sheet of glass in hand. She took the sheet and said prayers for the god — its moment of birth was its moment of death, the cave a womb and a tomb — and she walked with the sheet down a path in the cave that went far underground. She came at last to the library. There the god stayed — the glass his body his shroud his bones his flesh his power his breath his cry his story his story’s decay — until that night the people gathered and took out the sheet and projected its shadows onto the wall. And in this way, they worshipped him. And in this way, they mourned him. And after that, they filed his sheet away.

The next day, the miners went into the rock, as they did every morning, and they moved their table to the cut in the rock they’d made the day before, and they poured coffee, and each chose a word to mark and remember what had come before.

The one who could still hear the sounds of the water chose

“conch.”

the gesture of filming And the one who still traced the shadows in his mind’s eye chose “trident.”

And the one who could still taste seawater on his lips chose

“salt.”

And the still-blind one chose “pearl.”

And when they had finished their coffee the speakers spoke and the listeners listened. And the cave was filled with strips of sound.

And they stayed that way through the morning, until one of the listeners began to hear reversal (saaaaaaaaalllllltttttttttttttttttttlll- laaaaaaaalalalalasasasasasasasasasaaaaaaaaltasaltalsalatasasasa-sa) and he looked at the twisting lips of the speaker and looked at the rock that was moving with shadows — the plumping of a crown of clouds, the arcing of a bolt of fingers — and the min-ers fell silent, and the cave grew cold, and one reached for the shivering glass, and they prepared themselves to bear witness to a new storm god in its birth and in its death.

Until that very moment, Gaspar had never really noticed the world. Th is, despite the fact that he was making steady progress into his third decade of inhabiting it. Indeed, this young man remembered the exact moment everything changed, as if it were a fi lm still, pinned somewhere prominent in the velvet lobby of his mind. He was sitting on the side of his creaky bed, holding the letter from his aunt, his hand shaking. His brow sprouted sudden beads of sweat, despite the late autumn weather.

“Dear Gaspar,” it began, in the faultless handwriting of his aunt. “You will no doubt fi nd this letter rather odd, coming out of the blue like this, given that we have not seen each other, nor even corresponded, for many years — not since that Easter we spent by the lake. You were just a child then, so I imagine you have changed more than a little. I feel like I know quite a lot about you, however. More than perhaps I should. Which is why I am writing you now.” Gaspar’s eyebrows had knitted together with curiosity at this point. “You see, I had a dream about you last night. And not just any dream. Th is one was very vivid. A

‘lucid’ dream, I suppose they call it. As if I were actually there with you. But more than this, in fact. It was as if I were you. Do you see? It was as if I were seeing the world from your eyes.”

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Here, Gaspar had sat down, intrigued by his (clearly) eccen-tric aunt, diving into this tale of her strange dream life without any of the usual arabesques of politesse that he and his com-patriots would not usually forsake (the equivalent of offering a meal without a sauce). “The details were not exceptional, but they were crystal clear. My dream-self found you in the Tuiler-ies, reading a newspaper. You were particularly taken with a re-view of the play that you attended the night before, but were too distracted to follow. You were heartened to read that you did not miss anything special. Then I — that is, you — drank some coffee and discussed the developing situation in Germany with the old man sitting at the table next to you, for a good ten minutes. You then walked down the Rue de la Castiglione, where you stopped by a window to take note of a dress that you thought would suit your mistress, before sending a telegram to your publisher, not-ing once again that your modest advance has not yet arrived.”

By this time, upon his first reading of the letter, Gaspar’s throat had closed up, as if parched beyond all hope of repair.

These events had indeed happened to him the previous Mon-day, four days earlier. And in that very order! His rational mind checked for the date, but it was not a time for social jests or practical jokes. From what he could remember of his Aunt Ma-rie, she was not one to make light of any situation whatever, let alone others. What could be the meaning of it all? Had she ar-ranged for a private detective to follow him, and write down his movements? But for what possible purpose? And how could such a hypothetical person know his thoughts and motivations from distanced observation? The whole thing was as preposter-ous as it was uncanny. Unfortunately, it was also undeniable.

Aunt Marie’s letter had finished on a lighter note, by asking Gaspar to forgive her for sharing such a commonplace dream out of the blue like this. However, since it did indeed involve his person so intimately, she thought he might find it amusing:

the fact that she had “borrowed” him for the night, as it were.

Moreover, she promised to return the favor, should he be inter-ested in a holiday from his own unique perspective on things, one of these nights.

the gesture of filming Gaspar had postponed replying to his aunt until he could find a rational explanation for it. But after consulting with a close friend, and one of his ex-tutors, he was no closer to solving the mystery. And so with a strange inky feeling in his heart, he wrote a letter to his aunt, confessing that she had indeed stowed away in one of his recent experiences, and that they must have some kind of supernatural — or paranormal — sympathetic connections. Gaspar was a young man living not long after the Great War, however. All those tales of spirit mediums and ani-mal magnetism had evaporated, along with the Victorian belief in unbroken moral progress. Nevertheless, there was no deny-ing the phenomenon, even if the forces behind it were, for the moment at least, proving so elusive.

Aunt Marie’s response came quickly; her handwriting not nearly as assured and careful as before. “You can’t possibly mean this, Gaspar!” it began, as if they had been in the middle of a heated discussion already. “You would not make fun of your poor aunt, would you? Nothing can be gained from that!” But soon she was convinced of her nephew’s sincerity — along with his perplexity, now shared equally between them. Moreover, her dreams continued; almost every night. She would write letters providing details, and he would verify them, his sense of real-ity becoming less and less certain each time. It appeared that she would experience a seemingly random hour from Gaspar’s day — sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, other times at night — approximately four days after they oc-curred. Each time she could describe these experiences down to the most minute detail: the precise type of cufflink, the sound of the rain on top of the taxi, the slight pain in the left molar, the dessert that he had abandoned after two bites.

Gaspar and Marie (which is what they called each other, given their new-found intimacy) switched to the telephone to conduct their now daily conversation; their initial sense of disorientation and panic diminishing over time, even as their acute confusion remained. After a while, soothed by each other’s voices and mu-tual predicament, the mystery became an intimate connection that they began to have difficulty imagining living without.

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tainly, Gaspar had at first felt rather indignant and violated by this unexpected intrusion into his existence. But he was careful never to blame his aunt directly, but rather whichever Cartesian demon was playing such wicked tricks on the two of them. After all, could he even bathe in privacy anymore? What of his rela-tionship with women? Was he to suspend his romantic life, lest Marie became an unwilling — but no doubt intrigued — voyeur?

Or even co-conspirator?

Indeed, an increasing portion of their telephonic discussions became informal analysis of Gaspar’s life, complete with advice from Marie, from everything to clothing to diet to the ways of love. As their relationship continued to intertwine — to the ex-tent that Marie was herself Gaspar at least 1/₂₄th of the time — he also started to dream both of, and as, his aunt. However, these were not glimpses of a recent experience, but rather a selection of moments from her years during the war, and before. (Who exactly was doing the selecting remained a mystery.) As a result, Gaspar’s closed nocturnal eyes were opened to new unimagined vistas, as he walked the world as this attractive, strong-willed woman, who seemed to know how to make doors open, and things happen, in ways he did not. He experienced the war as an adult, rather than as a child, albeit in small oneiric glimpses, for Marie had been a volunteer nurse at the Somme. But this was enough for him to know he was very fortunate not to have been a soldier then. The memories were so horrifying and vivid that he had trouble sleeping for weeks. But when he did manage to drift off, he would find another of Marie’s memories waiting for him; some more pleasant than others. The merciful shade of a parasol during a trip to Cairo. The dispiriting wine jellies gifted by a halfhearted paramour in London. And the exquisite sensa-tions provided by a gentleman speaking a rustic Italian.

After a while, Marie complained of the monotony of Gaspar’s days. And he could not help but agree, after witnessing her own life. Certainly, he was now able to dine on the fruits of a rich lifetime of experiences; but she was trapped in the rather mun-dane routine of a still undiscovered Parisian writer. It was this moment when Gaspar really began to notice the world, since he

the gesture of filming was living for two now. And all the things he encountered, via his five senses, were for both he and Marie. He wanted to make every moment count. He wanted every minute to be captivating, or thrilling, or amusing, or moving, in case any given experience would be part of Maria’s dream later that week. On one occa-sion, she complained that he had gone to see a moving picture, but the dream had ended before the credits rolled. He had thus been obliged to narrate the rest of the film over the telephone.

Indeed, this exchange was decisive, and radically changed the relationship he had with himself, and his own life, thanks to this strange new entangled chapter in his life. “Perhaps I am some kind of camera,” he hypothesized to himself. “One that can also project, like a human magic lantern.” In this scenario, Marie’s slumbering mind was a screen on which he somehow tele-projected the moving pictures of his existence. This possi-bility illuminated his soul like a bulb inside an Edison projector, and the mystery itself retreated from their thoughts and con-versations, as Gaspar and Marie became increasingly involved in what they called “the mechanics of the thing.” Why it was happening became less and less important. And in truth, they both began to worry — perhaps only unconsciously — that if they figured out the reason for it, the entire apparatus linking them would break down, and they would have to go back to their isolated existences.

Gaspar began to neglect his writing, and think of himself more as an auteur in the new art of the cinema. His two eyes were twin cameras, and the cellular matter of his brain was the celluloid on which he recorded the world. The projection mech-anism remained opaque and unlocated, but it seemed to func-tion without any conscious effort, as Marie received his “signals”

as clear as crystal, even when she traveled to the Volga for a spa treatment. (They had decided early on not to meet in per-son, lest the “connection” collapse through proximity.) And so Gaspar would spend many days in the parks, when the weather was fine, seemingly sketching his fellow men and women, but in fact making storyboards for his next “featurette.” He found that through meditation before bed, he could “edit” the events

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of the day in precise and creative ways, making his world far more interesting that it would normally be. He read technical manuals about the cinema, and philosophical treatises as well, trying to improve his art: Gorky, Epstein, Krakauer. He consult-ed the archives of Marey, and wrote to the Muybridge estate in England. An agent of the latter answered his questions with the minimum of patience and detail, presuming Gaspar to be yet another amateur director, with an eye on Hollywood, given his questions about “pacing…juxtaposition…meaning,” and so on.

An enigmatic man with a Czech accent, whom he had struck up a conversation in a café, told him: “Film is the first code in which surfaces move, a discourse of photographs.” Gaspar had scribbled this down, nodding his head in wine-soaked enthu-siasm, but was not sure how this observation could help him upon re-reading with a clear head.

Thus, at any given moment of Gaspar’s day, he considered the “rushes” of his film for Marie, to be premiered in a private night screening four days hence. He created an entire system in his mind, to signal to himself where a cut should happen, and where a splice would work best. He also exploited the Kule-shov effect, focusing on a banana peel on the street, and cut-ting suddenly to a pompous and arrogant man, stepping out of his house. Marie would smile in her sleep before anything had even occurred, and before gravity had had its revenge. Gaspar found himself anxiously awaiting her calls — always at ten past ten in the morning, after breakfast and note-taking — which increasingly began to sound like the quickly dictated cinema reviews journalist-critics make to their newspaper editors over the phone, in order to make it in time for the morning edition.

For her part, Marie found that she too could edit her memo-ries, if she dedicated an hour to doing so, before retiring prop-erly to bed. (For whatever reason, ginger tea seemed to make things cut together all the more smoothly; whereas for Gaspar, it was black olives that made a noticeable difference.) She would lie on her divan next to a table lamp muted by one of her scarves over the shade, and enjoy the chemical sensation of spooling memories over mind sprockets so that her already adventurous

the gesture of filming life began to yield the sweet pathos lying latent within. With the benefit of her wise hindsight, she created masterpieces which shook Gaspar to the core, until he began to lose confidence in his own cinematic peccadillos. He began to become insanely jealous of lovers she had entertained a quarter of a century ear-lier; and deliberately cultivate insomnia to avoid not only see-ing, but being ravished by, his rivals. This was too much for the

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